Hard Luck Hank: Prince of Suck (16 page)

“What if she wants the city to be
operating poorly?” I asked, after a moment. “I talked to some people and they
said they were in contact with Garm. In person.”

“Why would she want the city to be
running poorly? She owns it.”

“So no one challenges that ownership? I
don’t know. Maybe she makes more money like that. The only reason I can think
of why she would be talking to random people and not you or me is because we’ve
changed.”

“I haven’t changed,” toothless Delovoa
declared, reclining on his plush divan.

“I have. I’m a cop. I’m the city’s
police captain. I used to be a gang negotiator. I broke people’s legs because I
was paid to do it. I murdered people because I was paid to do it. Now I arrest
people like that.”

“Let’s be serious here, you’re not
exactly a great cop,” Delovoa purred. “You’re still doing gang negotiations and
murdering people. You just wear a tacky uniform and blab your stupid trials on
the loudspeakers when I’m trying to take a nap.”

“I didn’t say I was a super cop. But
even a dishonest cop is really different than what I used to be. Garm’s not
talking to me because she will never change. She is Quadrad. By birth, by
death, she once said to me. She will always be an assassin and a grifter no
matter how old she gets or how little sleep.”

“You don’t know. She may have fallen in
love with someone else and wants to spare you. Or maybe she is ashamed of her
appearance. Or maybe she’s found a really good book she hasn’t been able to put
down for forty years. There are a million reasons she might have become
anti-social and most of them have nothing to do with you. I swear, you date a
woman for a month and you think she owes you her life? Who was doing who a
favor on that one? Here’s a hint: look in the mirror.”

“Damn, man. Okay.”

I sulked and ate food.

“When’s the election?” Delovoa asked, as
if he hadn’t just ripped me a new one.

“Not sure.”

“Hank’s Butt,” Delovoa said, using a
common exclamation which he knew I found annoying, “if you don’t know, who
does?”

I looked through the one-way mirror and
saw MTB and Valia interviewing the feral kid we had arrested a few days back.
He looked good and hungry.

Valia hadn’t gone motherly like I asked.
She looked like a prostitute. Which either meant she disobeyed me or she’d had
an odd childhood.

I couldn’t hear them, but MTB was
playing hard as nails as usual and Valia was trying to seduce this kid. It was
comical how bad it was. I started pantomiming what they were saying.

“So, cutie, what brings you here?” I
said in a fake Valia voice.

“I’m going to pull out your teeth,
fasten them to a leather strap, and then flay your skin off with your own
teeth!” I growled like MTB.

“Sounds sexy. Here, look at my leg on
the table. Can you tell I don’t shave?”

Even if the feral kid wanted to talk, I
think he was too confused by my Kommilaire to answer properly. He just sat
there looking back and forth between them, wondering if non-feral people were
all insane.

I opened the door and stepped inside. The
feral kid’s eyes bugged when he saw me.

“Stompa’ Man! No chew me! No chew me! I
no big rise!” He squealed.

“Do you know him?” Valia asked me,
confused.

“All the feral kids know of Hank,” MTB
said.

I walked closer to the feral kid, not
saying anything. Even in a steel alloy building like this, the floor vibrated
as I walked. It was pretty intimidating.

I stood far enough away that he could
take me all in.

“You a leader? A boss? A chief?” I asked
him.

“I no big rise. No boss. You big boss,
Stompa’ Man. You big rise.”

“You tell others to fight.”

“I say. They say. Good claw.” He tried
to motion with his hands but they were secured to the table. The feral kid
language was a lot of non-verbal. You point at something or someone and that’s
pretty hard to misunderstand.

“Uncuff him,” I said.

MTB did so roughly.

The street lingo changed constantly. And
since my arms were heavy and unwieldy, I couldn’t do their little sign talk. I
tried to remember the words.

“Why you claw the…colors?” I said, trying
to describe the Order members.

“Good claw. Big chow,” he explained,
with an array of gestures thrown in.

“No claw. Uh, free chow.”

He cocked his head, not understanding.
He didn’t know what free meant. That concept was lost on a feral kid.

“Charity. Give. You. Trash chow.” I was
just guessing now.

“Junk?”

“Yeah!”

The feral kid seemed disturbed. Like he
understood that they attacked people who were giving them help. No one ever
helped the feral kids.

“Junk you,” I said. I then motioned
someone having an item and giving it away, and then held my hands up like I was
okay with that transaction.

He sat there blinking and then grew
angry.

“Ghost arm,” he said.

Valia looked back at me.

“What’s that?” she asked.

“19-10,” I said. “Draw it,” I told MTB.

“I never saw 19-10, Boss,” he answered.

“I explained him to you,” I said, annoyed.

MTB pretended to be a teleporting four-armed
battlesuit. It was incredibly clear he had never been an actor. If I hadn’t
known he was trying to show 19-10, I would’ve assumed he was having a seizure.

“Quit it. Valia, you try.”

She hesitated and then drew in the air a
torso, four arms, and two legs.

“Poof,” I added, opening both my hands,
and then looking around.

“Ghost arm!” The feral kid confirmed,
nodding. He also made numerous noises like
pshoo
and flashes with his
hands and put them all over his body. That could be the golden-silver color of
19-10 and his armor reflecting light.

“What’s all this mean?” MTB asked me.

“19-10 got the feral kids to attack the
Order,” I said.

“Why?” Valia asked.

“I don’t know.”

I was back on the Royal Wing walking
with Uulath.

I had some follow-up questions based on
what the feral kid had said.

The Royal Wing had a lot of ferals. It
was actually a pretty decent spot for them. Here they learned full Colmarian,
learned to work in a kind of society, learned some skills. In some ways they
were better off here than being out west in Belvaille.

A cage is still a cage, though.

As we were walking and Uulath was
filling me in on details of some makeshift construction they were doing, I
heard a woman screaming.

“What’s that?” I asked Uulath.

“Nothing,” he said.

I followed the voice, which was
definitely high-pitched panic and crying out “no.”

“It’s a wedding,” Uulath declared,
walking in front of me to try and slow me down.

“Wedding?” I asked, continuing to plod
forward. “Doesn’t sound very joyous.”

“It’s how we do things here. A citizen
has won the right to take a bride after dutiful service to the Royal Wing.”

“Does she have a say in this?”

“Eh,” Uulath stammered, making the
answer clear.

As I kept going the citizens of Royal
Wing stared at me. It struck me as poignant that I was far more a curiosity
than one of their fellow inmates screaming.

“Hank,” Uulath pleaded, “this is our
law. I have to be able to reward people. It’s either rewards or punishments.
You know that.”

I paused, thinking, then continued
onward.

There was a kind of hut made of some
wires with sheets hung over it. I tore off the sheet and there was a lady on
the ground fighting off a man. Both were clothed, if you could call the rags
they had around here clothes, and locked in a ferocious struggle.

On seeing me, the woman stopped
immediately. The man, noticing her gaze, turned and also froze.

I had no authority here. I dumped off
prisoners and kept them on the verge of death until they eventually
did
croak.
These people were the worst of Belvaille, which was not exactly a city of
angels.

I recognized the woman. She had been a cook
on Belvaille who poisoned several customers so she could rob them. But her face
held fear.

I had let this prison exist because I
had no other ideas what to do with its inhabitants. I never fixed anything on
Belvaille. I just shifted the problem.

I think it’s because I didn’t believe Belvaille
had a chance. I had seen the galaxy descend into civil war and then completely
break apart. Things had gotten worse and worse every year since. The Belvaille
of 150 years ago was a violent, criminal haven, that housed the scum of the empire,
but it would have been absolutely terrified to see what the city was today.

But how was I better than anything I was
pretending to fight if I could create a place like the Royal Wing?

Maybe what this prison, this city, this
galaxy needed was some hope.

“Stop it,” I said to the man.

“Hank, it’s the law,” Uulath said.

“You live or die based on my whims,” I
bellowed, “you’re going to tell me your laws?”

Uulath backed away, terrified.

“From now on, there will be laws here.
Real laws.”

Some citizens drew near to listen.

“If you adhere to the laws, you will be
rewarded. If you don’t, you will be further punished.”

“W-what are the laws?” Uulath asked,
shuddering.

“Uh. I don’t know yet.”

“What rewards?” someone asked.

There was now a crowd of about a dozen prisoners
standing around listening raptly. I spoke as clearly and loudly as I could.

“If you adhere to all the regulations,
you may, after a suitable period of time, be allowed back to Belvaille as a
true citizen. It will not be an easy task,” I warned.

No one clapped. No one smiled. They only
stared. Maybe hope was not allowed under their current laws.

Uulath, however, fell to his knees, his
mouth wide open. His hands went up to his face but didn’t quite touch it. He
seemed to be legitimately in shock.

“Hank,” Uulath fumbled over his tongue,
“we all thank you!”

“Come on,” I barked at him.

He jumped to his feet.

“You,” I pointed to the woman, “you’re
not married anymore.”

I then pointed to the man and he bounded
away from her like she was on fire.

After we had walked some distance I
thought of something else.

“How many ‘marriages’ are there?” I
asked.

“About sixty. Not many women here,”
Uulath replied.

“Are they all like that one?”

“I suppose. Yes. No one came here
married. But I think some have grown into them.”

“Damn.”

I took out my radio.

“Valia.”

“Yes, sir?”

“I need you to board the Royal Wing in a
bit and validate some marriages.”

“Huh?”

“And ask MTB where we can put sixty-odd
women on Belvaille long-term.”

I turned off the radio.

“Hank, we are all sentenced to life in
prison on the Royal Wing, not Belvaille. Isn’t it unfair that women prisoners
get better treatment just because they are women?” Uulath asked.

“Yes. But it’s also unfair they get
worse
treatment. Life isn’t fair. I’m just doing what I can to make it as close as
possible.”

We walked for some time and reached the
people I was looking for, some former feral kids now repairing the shanty homes
of the inmates. Uulath called them over but they were still anxious on seeing
me and it took some coaxing to bring them down from the second and third
stories where they were working.

“The Supreme Kommilaire has some
questions for you. Answer him as best you can,” Uulath stated firmly.

They looked at me timidly.

“You were in feral kid gangs, right?”

“I don’t know if they were gangs. It’s
all very fluid,” one said.

“Yeah, there aren’t any rules or
organization. Not like here,” the other said.

Wow. Holding up the Royal Wing as a
paragon of sophistication.

“It might have been after your time, but
did a robot or person in shiny armor, with four arms ever talk to you? Or did
you see him?”

They both seemed incredibly confused.

“A Dredel Led?”